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Fujitsu Laboratories has developed a new simulation technology for systems using the ARMcomputing core. The technology is able to faithfully reproduce hardware operations with cycle-for-cycle real-time accuracy.

Systems using the ARM core have become dramatically more complex in recent years, creating a need for a simulation technology that runs faster and with better fidelity to the hardware, for use both in testing whether the system runs as designed, and in application and operating-system development. What Fujitsu Laboratories has developed is a platform for running simulations that allows for cycle-level simulations with low system overhead, based on a just-in-time compiler.

The just-in-time compiler is a widely used approach for fast simulations of the ARM core, also used in Java runtime engines. But the JIT compiler approach does not faithfully reproduce time-based information. When cycle-level simulations are called for, other simulation technologies that run hundreds of times slower than a JIT compiler have been the only option.

Fujitsu Laboratories has developed a simulation technology that runs as fast as a JIT compiler but with precise cycle-level fidelity. This makes it possible for a standard PC environment to simulate an ARM multicore system with cycle-level fidelity at speeds greater than 100 MHz, a hundredfold speedup. Simulations run with a ±5% margin of error relative to running on the hardware, for fast, faithful simulations.

Fujitsu hopes that this technology will help to shorten the development cycle for systems and devices using ARM cores.

Details of this technology were presented at DATE 2012 (Design, Automation, & Test in Europe), which opened March 12 in Dresden, Germany.